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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22498675">Baby this should be simple, loving me isn't that hard</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionisthebetterreality/pseuds/fictionisthebetterreality'>fictionisthebetterreality</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Marriage, Post-Canon, SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS, Spoilers, john wants to leave his past but his past doesnt want to leave him</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:15:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>474</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22498675</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionisthebetterreality/pseuds/fictionisthebetterreality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>John is happy. </p><p>He's happy that Abigail is happy, he's happy that Jack is happy. He's even happy that Uncle survived his visit with the Skinners well enough to go on bitching and moaning more than ever, it seems like.<br/>He's over the goddamn moon that Micah Bell is lying half eaten and rotted somewhere on a mountainside up north, hopefully suffering whatever fate awaits traitors and murderers that turn on their own (he wonders, sometimes, about Dutch, but no use wishing for things that ain't here no more).<br/>Sadie writes him, and so does Charles, eventually, when he tires himself of wandering enough to settle. </p><p>He wakes up with the sun, looks over at the land - his land - with it, and thinks, this is it. </p><p>We made it.</p><p>       *<br/>(A voice in the back of his head whispers, is this it?)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Abigail Roberts Marston/John Marston</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Baby this should be simple, loving me isn't that hard</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hey! So this is the first thing I've posted in a while, but the idea has been floating around in my head ever since I finished the game last year, so. Give it a read and please don't hesitate to leave a comment or some kudos x</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>John marries Abigail.</p><p>He buys her a house, builds it; buys her land, works it. They end the year with a functioning – if small – farmstead, and it grows them enough to live off of decently, which is all he’s ever wanted to give his wife. They spend more time together, time without arguments, without raised voices or short comments. They sit in front of the fire in the winter, and Abbie knits them blankets while John dozes, the dog by his feet. Jack joins them more and more as months pass, reading, writing, staring out the window (at what,  John doesn’t know - there’s only deer and cows that roam the fields here).</p><p>Jack starts to take part more – he gets curious, gets restless, takes more of an interest in his father, in their life here. They won’t ever have the kind of relationship John had with Hosea, with Dutch, but could be that’s a good thing, John thinks. He just knows that it makes him happy to see the boy – his boy – running up the front steps, cap in hand and smile brighter than any gold John’s ever seen.</p><p>They survive their first patch of bad business – had to come at some point, John’s a realist, he knew there would be a catch to a place as picture perfect as this, but they scrape through without anyone dying, somehow, and it seems a miracle. So when Sadie brings news of Micah, John is ready, ready to give it all up, much as it kills him, because Micah goddamn Bell does <em>not</em> get to live, he does not get to carry on breathing the same air that Arthur, and Hosea, and Lenny and all the rest should be – well, after their business with Micah, John finally stops praying and dares to <em>hope</em>.</p><p>He hopes that Abbie, his wife, the love of his life if ever he had one, can be happy here. That she can stop looking over her shoulder for the next damn thing to go wrong, can stop assuming the worst when Jack disappears from sight for more than a moment (his fault, he knows, but it’s something he accepted responsibility for a long time ago).</p><p>He hopes that Jack can grow up happy and <em>free</em>, with choices that John cannot understand, but choices that he would never dare take away (choices he never had). He hopes to see more of his boys smile, to hear his laughter, to see what kind of man he grows up to be (he thinks it’s going to be a pretty damn good one, truth be told).</p><p>He hopes that for once in their lives, in their history of settling and running and hiding and fighting, that this can work.</p><p> </p><p>John marries Abigail, and wakes up to the barrel of a gun in his face.</p><p>He smiles.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading this! Super short but I do have some vague ideas as to where it can go from here. Feel free to give it some love or leave a comment - any comment is a good comment, and I always reply!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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